Objective:

Evaluate a national neurology community care dashboard and describe its build and functionality. Demonstrate its public health application and neurological care coordination.   

Background:

Neurological care coordination at a population level requires an accurate and reliable database that is user-friendly and produces timely and relevant reports. Furthermore, the ability to forecast public health needs requires standardized clinical and financial data collection over time. A neurology dashboard was set up to monitor and predict cost estimates of the medical services provided through community care referrals. The system was also responsible for assessing the number of patients remaining in the network.

Design/Methods:

A quality improvement (QI) study is currently in progress. A mixed methods design is being used, drawing from the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model. A 15-item survey of the value and usability of the dashboard and in-depth key informant interviews of neurology dashboard users are being conducted. 

Results:

After several cycles of building and editing the dashboard, a beta version of the dashboard has been deployed. The current iteration displays utilization of community care among veterans with various neurology related conditions. Volume and cost of care by facility, patient demographic, ICD co-morbidities, and procedure codes can be extracted and visualized. Preliminary results of stakeholder interviews indicate that the dashboard was perceived as a useful tool among its users and was beneficial in improving cost analysis and monitoring patient flow in the network.

Conclusions:

The dashboard has the potential to be a highly valuable tool to monitor the coordination of neurological care. Although the tool was developed for a specific healthcare network, modules, and components of the dashboard may help inform the development of population-level neurology dashboards for other healthcare systems.